


make me be true

by rulebreakingmoth



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, Repression, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-01-29 14:48:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21411940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rulebreakingmoth/pseuds/rulebreakingmoth
Summary: “Eddie, please. You’re already driving to New York!”“That’s not the issue. The issue is…” he trails off. The issue is not where, it’s who. It’s not just the driving to New York, it’s the driving to New York with-“Richie is one of my best friends,” Beverly insists. “And you’re the only person he knows who's going to New York.”“He barely knows me,” Eddie protests. “And he also doesn’t like me.”-in which Eddie drives Richie from college to New York City in a day, and then can't seem to get rid of him for the next 12 years; a When Harry Met Sally AU
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 19
Kudos: 70





	1. a lucky star's above (but not for me)

**Author's Note:**

> When Harry Met Sally is the only movie i've ever seen and reddie is the only thing i ever think about, so this was the natural conclusion of a lot of my hyperfixations. fic title is from "It Had to Be You," chapter title is from "But Not For Me" - both songs performed by Harry Connick Jr. on the WHMS soundtrack
> 
> content warning for one use of a gay slur and a lot of internalized homophobia/shame/self-hatred

**University of Maine, 1998**

“I don’t know about this, Bev.”

“Eddie, _ please _. You’re already driving to New York!”

He’s got most of his room packed up already, half of it shipped away in boxes to his new apartment, and Beverly is watching from his bare, lofted bed as he meticulously folds his underwear into neat squares. She has her chin in her hands, pleading with him in a coy, cute little way that probably works on other guys. Eddie, however, is not so easily swayed.

“That’s not the issue. The issue is…” he trails off. The issue is not _ where _ , it’s _ who _. It’s not just the driving to New York, it’s the driving to New York with-

“Richie is one of my best friends,” Beverly insists. “And you’re the only person he knows who’s going to New York.”

“He barely knows me,” Eddie protests. “And he also doesn’t like me.” He tosses a particularly holey pair of tighty-whities into the discard pile.

“He likes you! He specifically told me he likes you.”

Now that’s a crock of shit. Eddie has spoken to Richie approximately twice, and neither time was anything other than blatantly antagonistic. The first was at Bev’s twenty-first birthday party, where Richie spilled a drink on Eddie’s pants and, when Eddie started yelling about liquor stains, told him his voice sounded like a “pissed off Woody Woodpecker.” The second time was in a discussion section for a classics class, in which they were paired up for a group project and spent the entire period arguing about whether or not Oedipus still would have fucked his mom if he knew she was his mom. (“Yes,” argued Richie, like a pervert. Or a sociopath.) Eddie switched sections the next day, and just like that, any chances of friendship between the two were obliterated.

“He sure doesn’t act like it.” Eddie moves onto folding socks. Beverly groans, rolling onto her back, sprawled out like she’s making a snow angel on the rock hard dorm mattress. (To Eddie’s chagrin, even RAs get shitty dorm beds.) 

“Why are you pushing this so hard?” he asks. “What do you stand to gain from this?”

“Uhhh.” Bev sheepishly flings a hand over her eyes.

“Beverly.”

She peeks through two fingers. “I may have already told him you said yes.”

He breathes. In for four, hold for four, out for four. Just like the campus counselor taught him. Then throws a wad of dirty socks at her head.

\---

He’s parked outside of Richie’s apartment building, tapping his hands restlessly on the steering wheel. He lays on the horn for what must be the tenth time, and Richie still doesn’t come out. It’s a seven hour drive to New York, and they were supposed to leave at noon to make it before sundown, but now that Richie is fifteen minutes late, and taking rest stops and dinner into consideration, they might not get into the actual city before dark, and Eddie _ hates _ driving in the dark, he’s an excellent driver, but his mother is honestly right when she says you just can’t trust the other people on the road, and-

A slam on the hood of the car and an “Eddie Spaghetti!” snap him out of his spiral. He clutches at his chest, startled and embarrassed about it. 

“Don’t call me that,” he protests weakly as Richie is loading his suitcase into the backseat. “You’re late.”

Richie ignores him, letting out a low whistle when he sees all the boxes Eddie has loaded up in the back. “Jesus, Kaspbrak, everything but the kitchen sink, huh?”

“Uh, yeah, well. I’m moving to New York.” He eyes Richie’s single black duffle bag. “Don’t you wanna bring anything else?”

“Hm? Nah.” Richie elects to crawl into the passenger seat from the back instead of just going around the outside. Eddie ducks out of the way, scoffing, and oh yes, that is Richie’s jean-clad ass in his face. He tries not to stare. “Kinda figured I’d just start fresh, y’know?”

“I suppose.” Eddie doesn’t understand. He’s got years and years of stuff in those boxes, old comics and stained T-shirts and his inhaler, which he’s trying to wean himself off of after being told by a doctor that his asthma attacks were actually anxiety attacks, but _ still _. It’s all his stuff and his history, and he can’t imagine just throwing it all out to “start fresh.”

But that’s just how guys like Richie are. _ Bohemian _ , Bev would say. He’s more partial to _ deadbeat. _

“You want me to take first shift?” Richie is staring at him expectantly, and he realizes he’s just been sitting here wordlessly with the car still in park. He shakes his head.

“No, I’m already up here.”

“Cool.” Richie drums his hands restlessly in his lap as Eddie finally shifts the car into drive and pulls away from the curb. Current ETA: way too fucking late.

“Can I play some tunes?” Richie asks.

Eddie shrugs. “Sure.” It’s nice that he asked. Truthfully, he hasn’t been that bad so far. He at least hasn’t said anything particularly egregious or perverted yet. Maybe this will be fine, Eddie starts to believe.

Richie tunes the radio to the one station playing exclusively disco pop, and his face lights up. Eddie blanches.

“Oh, fuck yeah! Come on, Eds, smile! It’s Abba!” Eddie does not smile. “Eddie! It’s Mamma Mia!”

Of course he knows all the lyrics. It’s going to be a long seven hours.

\---

“When’s dinner?” Richie asks two hours in, when the sun is still high in the sky.

“Dinnertime,” Eddie says after a beat.

“Do you have any snacks?” Richie starts rummaging through the glove compartment. Eddie clenches his hands on the wheel.

“No.” It’s true. His mother always (hypocritically) taught him that it’s unhealthy to eat between meals, and he hasn’t kicked that habit yet.

“Fuck.” Richie kicks his feet up onto the dashboard. “Why don’t you tell me the story of your life?”

Eddie looks back and forth between him and the road, eyebrows knitted together. “What?”

“We got a couple hours to kill. A little conversation might distract me from my starvation and the ulcer burning its way into my stomach-”

“That is not how you get ulcers-”

“Ah ah ah,” he interrupts, _ infuriatingly _. “Answer the question.”

“Story of my life?” How far back is he supposed to go? To freshman year? To _ Derry _? He doesn’t particularly want to go either of those places. “I guess I don’t have one. Nothing’s happened to me yet.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true!”

“Everybody has a life story,” Richie says, digging through his pockets and coming out with a pack of cigarettes. Eddie’s nose wrinkles on sight. 

“Do _ not _smoke those in my car.” His throat is closing up just thinking about it.

“Fine, I’ll just hold it in my mouth.” He demonstrates, the cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth like he’s been studying James Dean. “See? Still look cool.”

“You shouldn’t smoke those anyway. Heard of a little thing called lung cancer?”

“No, what’s that?” Richie deadpans.

“I’m just saying, you’re so obsessed with life stories but you’re not even gonna _ have _one if you’re hooked up to an iron lung by the time you’re thirty-”

“Impressive deflection, Eds, but you still haven’t answered the question.”

“What do you want me to say?” he snaps, patience worn to the bone. “I’m twenty-two, I just graduated from a state school because I couldn’t afford out of state tuition, I come from a shitty town and a shitty family, and I’m moving to New York to be a risk analyst so I can stop fucking thinking about all of that. _ That _ is the story of my life, Trashmouth.”

The car is silent then, and Richie doesn’t seem to have any comebacks or quips to counter Eddie’s outburst, and Eddie feels weird for wishing he did. For the first time this whole trip, he feels actually uncomfortable in his own skin, like maybe he would have been better off just keeping his mouth shut. Which doesn’t feel quite fair, because Richie would never feel bad about not keeping his mouth shut. 

Richie is staring out the windshield. “What’s a risk analyst?” he asks finally, and he sounds genuinely curious. Eddie’s still cautious, looking around for the punchline.

“They review risk factors. For like, businesses.” 

“And this is a job you _ want _to do?” There it is.

“Yes.”

“Nobody’s putting a gun to your head?”

“Fuck you, man,” Eddie says, but he feels a lot better. “Why are you going to New York?”

“Oh,” Richie says, like he’s surprised to be asked. “I think I’m gonna try my hand at comedy.”

Eddie can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of him. _ Of course _ , he thinks, _ Trashmouth thinks he’s a fucking comedian _. 

“What?” Richie asks, and Eddie laughs harder.

“Nothing, nothing,” Eddie says through giggles. “It’s just that that’s the funniest thing you’ve said in two hours.

Richie looks affronted. “Not cool, dude,” he says, but Eddie catches him grinning at the corners out of his mouth like he can’t help it either. 

\---

They do stop for dinner a few hours later, ahead of Eddie’s schedule, but after the third audible stomach grumble he is forced to admit that he’s as hungry as Richie is. The diner is called Frank’s, but the neon red “F” on the sign is burnt out, so Richie can’t stop giggling and repeating “Rank’s” under his breath the whole time they’re walking up.

They’re seated at a booth in the back, and based on the amount of crumbs still lingering and the number of circular water glass stains left, a family of four just vacated the premises. He pulls out the pack of baby wipes he keeps in his pocket for instances exactly like this and scrubs the table down. 

He feels Richie’s eyes on him before he sees them. “_ What _?”

Richie raises his arms in self defense. “Hey, man, I didn’t say anything.”

Richie ducks his head back down to stare at the menu pointedly. Eddie sighs. He’s starting to feel bad. He knows he’s acting irrational, on edge and defensive about every little thing, but who could blame him? It’s Richie Tozier he’s dealing with here. If he doesn’t nip the bullshit in the bud early, he’ll be answering to “Eddie Spaghetti” and tolerating a string of your mom jokes by the time they hit New York.

The waitress comes to take their order, an older lady with a sweet face who reminds him of some of his favorite nurses from back home, the kind who snuck him lollipops when his mom wasn’t looking. “What can I do for ya?”

Eddie resists the urge to ask if they make anything gluten-free or if there’s a possibility of tree nut contamination - he knows now that he is not allergic to gluten or tree nuts, regardless of what his mother told him, though he does have a mild intolerance towards dairy. He could order the peanut butter pancakes and be in the clear.

Still. He’s already anxious and testy, and he figures it doesn’t hurt to ask a few questions. “Is the chicken pot pie made in-house?” he asks her.

She smiles. “It sure is!”

“And where do you get your chicken from?”

She stutters a little. “I- well, I’d have to go check-”

“It’s not frozen, is it? Because if it is, I’d rather not have it because you can never really tell where it came from. I mean, those chickens could have been raised eating their own shit for all I know. I’d practically be begging for salmonella.”

The waitress - Peggy, he sees on her nametag - pauses for a second. “So if it _ is _frozen-”

“If it’s frozen, scratch the whole thing. I’ll have an egg white omelet, no tomatoes. Same deal though, only if the eggs are fresh.”

“Oh, sweetie, we’d never serve old eggs to a customer,” Peggy croons.

He scoffs. “That’s what you think, but you’d really have no way of knowing if you’re getting month-old eggs until you’re coughing them back up the next day.” 

“So you don’t want the omelet.” 

“No, I do. But no tomatoes.” He hands her his menu and smiles.

A little less cheery than before, she turns to Richie. “And for you?”

“Turkey sandwich.” 

She leaves with their orders, and Eddie sips his water and deliberately does not make eye contact with Richie again.

“So I have some questions-” Richie starts.

“I won’t respond to them.”

“You didn’t even let me start!”

“Because I know what you’re going to say.” Eddie meticulously folds his napkin into neat little squares to keep his hands busy. “You’re going to ask me why I order like-”

“A pop star having a mental breakdown?”

Eddie glares. “Yes. Like that. And I’ll tell you the truth, which is that I am very particular and I like what I like.” It’s not the full truth, but it’s good enough. Richie doesn’t need to know the particular brand of neuroses Eddie is dealing with here. “And then you’re going to make a stupid joke, like ‘Your mom likes what she likes!’ and I am going to tell you to shut up, and we won’t have made any real progress in the conversation anyway, so why even start?”

He flicks his hands out flippantly, as if to say, _ So there you go _, and he takes a drink from his water glass.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?”

Eddie sputters, choking on a piece of ice. He spits it back into his glass, grimacing and making a mental note to ask for a new one. “What?”

“You don’t like me.” He doesn’t look angry, not at all really. It’s more like...hurt. Like he’s disappointed that Eddie doesn’t like him, and it’s not that Eddie _ dislikes _ him, it’s just that…

“No, I-” he stutters. “You don’t like _ me _.”

“That’s not true! Why would you think that?”

“Because! All you ever do is try to provoke me! With the dumb jokes and the stupid nicknames-”

“Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie says, proving his point, “that’s just because you’re so cute when you’re pissed.”

Eddie feels a hot blush spreading all the way down to his collarbone and tells himself that it’s just because he’s angry. “Fuck off.” But Richie has that shit-eating grin creeping back onto his face, and as much as Eddie doesn’t want to admit it, it’s still better than before when he looked like a wounded bird or something else very fragile.

They bring him his omelet a few minutes later, and there are tomatoes in it, but as he’s gearing up to call the waitress back and complain, Richie cuts him off with a “Dude,” and picks all the tomatoes out with his fork.

Fine, he thinks. At least he didn’t use his fingers.

\---

The sun has officially set and they’re still about two hours out, but Eddie hasn’t checked the time since they left the diner because he and Richie have been engrossed in an _ infuriating _ discussion about-

“Ferris is a figment of Cameron’s imagination.”

“Oh my god, no he is not.”

“He is! Okay, look.” Richie has turned himself completely sideways in the passenger seat so he can monologue at Eddie directly. Eddie, for what it’s worth, is doing his best to keep his eyes on the road. “Cameron’s a loser, right, he’s defeatist and he’s a stick in the mud - he’s a lot like you, actually-”

“Okay, fuckface, _ watch it _.”

“-but Ferris is his polar opposite. He’s impulsive and popular and sexually active- like someone else I know, thank you very much-”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Eddie says with an unwilling smile pulling across his face.

“-and for some reason he’s best friends with Cameron. So one day, _ ‘Ferris’ _,” he puts finger quotes around the name, “pretends to be sick so he can-”

“I’ve seen the movie!”

“Okay, okay, yadda yadda yadda, you know what happens, the whole point is it’s all in Cameron’s mind. The whole day Cameron is at home in bed dreaming up this perfect man, the id to his superego, because he wants to escape himself. He wants to be the type of guy who could lie to everyone and feel no remorse. He wants to get the girl and dance in the parade and steal a car, and then at the end there’s catharsis - that’s a film term, _ catharsis- _”

“You sound like an asshole.” He’s struck by the possibility that Richie took film classes, and the more he thinks about it, the clearer he can see it, Richie yelling from the back row of a lecture hall about “catharsis” and “character arcs” and alienating every film major with his insane theories about _ St. Elmo’s Fire _.

Richie’s on a roll now, and Eddie can’t help the bubbly sort of amusement he feels watching him gesticulate wildly. “There’s catharsis at the end when he takes it all out on his dad by destroying his car. _ That’s _what Ferris would do.”

“So wait, is that part of the dream or does he actually do that?”

“What?”

“You said the whole movie is him dreaming in bed. So does he crash the car in real life?”

Richie pauses for a second, like the thought has never occurred to him. Then he shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Sure it matters!”

“Why?”

“It’s the difference between a destroyed car and an intact one!”

“The car is just details, Eds.” There’s that name again, the one Eddie hasn’t _ explicitly _asked him not to use in a few hours but still wishes he wouldn’t. “What matters is that he comes to the right conclusion. He’s gotta stand up to his dad. Ferris teaches him that.”

Eddie’s chest feels tight, and he doesn’t really want to examine why, although part of him can still hear her wailing _ Eddie Bear, you’re sick, you need help, you are killing your mother! _ as he carries his suitcases to the car.

He grips the steering wheel tight and soldiers past it. “What about Sloane? Is she just some girl Cameron is in love with?”

“Eddie, please,” Richie says, like he’s explaining this to a very small child. “Sloane is an _ idea _. She’s the…” He searches for the right word. “...personification of romance.”

“I always kinda felt like Cameron was into Sloane, though.”

Richie laughs. “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.”

“What?” 

“Are you listening to anything I’m saying? If anything, Cameron is into Ferris.”

Eddie chuckles, then realizes too late that he’s the only one laughing. “Wait, what?”

“It’s classic closet case behavior,” Richie continues. “He thinks he wants to _ be _ Ferris because he can’t admit that he wants to be _ in _Ferris.”

Eddie gulps at that, feeling suddenly like the car is too hot and his collar is too tight, and Richie is just nodding solemnly from the passenger seat. He sounds like someone who can speak from experience on the matter, and wow, he’s _ really _serious, Eddie realizes belatedly, and now it’s too late for him to do anything other than nod back and choke out, “Well, I guess that’s a theory.” 

Richie’s a little less enthusiastic when he starts back up again, but not any quieter. “The whole thing is about-”

“Could we just shut up about Ferris Bueller for a second?” Eddie snaps. Richie’s face stiffens, he slides back down into his seat, and Eddie recognizes a wall being put up when he sees one.

“Sure thing, Eddie-o Spaghettio.”

They drive in silence, the air in the car thick and stale. Eddie rolls down the window, and once there’s wind whipping through the car, he can’t seem to control his thoughts. Is Richie...does he think that _ Eddie _is…

He remembers vividly being eight years old, twelve years old, seventeen years old, being smaller than everyone else and not understanding why it made him a _ fag _, just that it did and everyone knew it, and that if Mommy found out she’d lock him up in his room and never let him leave, so he’d better take a girl to prom and try not to gag on the scent of her perfume, and he feels like he’s gagging now-

No, not gagging, but wheezing, he can’t breathe, and Richie is leaning across the console with hands hovering.

“Hey, man, you okay?”

“Don’t fucking touch me!” 

Richie recoils, but not all the way back. “You gotta pull over, dude.” He’s right, and Eddie lets Richie ease his hands over Eddie’s on the steering wheel to help him gently relax into the turn even though his skin feels like it’s on fucking fire.

He remembers the spare inhaler in the glove compartment and reaches over with shaking hands, aware of Richie watching him and wanting desperately for it to _ go away, stop fucking looking at me _ . He takes a puff, feeling his airways relax instantly. _ It’s a fucking placebo, you coward _. But it helps. His hands go limp in his lap and he closes his eyes, and even though his mind is still racing, he doesn’t feel so much like a tightly wound watch with a twitching minute hand anymore.

He breathes in and out, and he tries not to feel ashamed that he used his inhaler again as a crutch. No matter what that campus counselor and all of the urgent care doctors say about “anxiety disorder” and “psychosomatic,” a part of him will probably always feel like he has asthma.

Richie’s staring straight ahead, trying not to make any noise, and while that would normally be a godsend, now it’s just a reminder of how fucked up he is, how fucked up and _ sick _ and-

“I’m not gay,” he blurts. 

Richie slowly starts to nod. “Okay.”

“I don’t know what Bev told you, or what you’ve heard-”

“Nothing,” Richie hurries to answer. “I was just talking about the movie, dude.”

Right. Of course he was. Richie was just talking about the movie, and Eddie is a psycho. These are the facts, and they make him want to scream and throw up and flip his car in equal measure.

“Let’s just be quiet for the rest of the ride.”

To his complete surprise, Richie obeys.

\---

Eddie drops Richie off in front of some shitty apartment in the Bronx that looks like its about two building code violations away from becoming a pile of dust in the street. Eddie gets out and opens the back door to be polite, letting Richie heave his bag out of the backseat himself. 

They stand facing each other for a half second too long, long enough for Eddie to consider asking Richie if he wants to meet up for drinks or coffee sometime. He doesn’t have a new phone number set up yet, but he’s been thinking about getting an email address. People use those to make plans, right? He could do that. He could send Richie an invitation, one that says _ Hey, wanna get drinks some time, also sorry for that time I accused you of calling me gay and had a panic attack on the side of the road and fucked up a perfectly good conversation. _

“Well,” Richie says after Eddie can’t bring himself to say anything. “Goodbye.”

And yeah, maybe that’s better. Maybe that’s for the best. A handshake outside Richie’s new deathtrap apartment, a jaunty two-fingered salute in Eddie’s direction, and Richie’s back disappearing up the front steps.

Eddie doesn’t let himself watch for much longer before he gets back in the driver’s seat and heads towards Brooklyn.

He’s read that there are more than seven million people in New York City - that’s seven times the population of the entire state of Maine. It’s a fact that’s always made him feel small in the good kind of way, the way it feels nice to be able to slip under the radar in a crowd, or to know that all of your fuckups and flaws don’t really matter in the grand scheme of the universe because you’re just a speck of dust anyway. But now it just makes him feel alone.

Richie Tozier is the only person he knows in New York. And he will never see him again.


	2. the clothes you're wearing are the clothes you wore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie Tozier hasn’t changed much in five years, and if it weren’t for the five o’clock shadow that’s creeping towards full on stubble, Eddie might say he hasn’t aged at all. He looks exactly as Eddie remembers him - which, if he’s being honest, he tries very hard not to remember Richie at all. But he’s here, in the middle of LaGuardia, looking like some sort of hippie-cum-functional alcoholic, and it takes a hard tug on his tie from Myra for him to realize oh shit, he’s been staring.
> 
> “Eddie, what are you looking at?” she asks with little patience, twisting around to see what’s so interesting. 
> 
> “Nothing, hon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this update took a thousand years, but of course i got distracted by an unrelated oneshot that has ended up being twice as long as it was supposed to be with no sign of ending soon. 
> 
> chapter title is from "Where or When" by Rodgers & Hart

**New York City, 2003**

The worst thing about 9/11, other than the obvious fact that it was an American tragedy that led to the deaths of many, many innocent people and a frankly unsettling political climate, is the goddamn motherfucking TSA.

“I wish you didn’t have to gooooooo,” Myra whines. “I don’t understand why you won’t just staaaaaay!”

Eddie can see how long the United line is from here, and he knows that it’ll take at least another hour and a half, but Myra is still fussing over his collar near the check-in desks, muttering something about Chicago winds and fallen trees and how she heard about this family that died during a power outage because their fireplace wasn’t up to code, so he  _ really  _ should just consider staying home for the weekend-

And while she’s going on and on about things he’s already thought about himself, his eye catches on a lanky figure standing at the United ticketing desk.

His hair is too long for any respectable adult but too short to be a statement. It’s just right at the length that says “I don’t care about my appearance,” and the rest of the outfit follows suit. He’s wearing a tie-dyed shirt, sloppy enough to be homemade, and mismatched socks underneath sandals. 

Eddie can’t take his eyes off of the guy, and he chalks it up to his own being judgmental. That is, until the guy turns around and Eddie gets a closer look at his face.

_ Oh. _

Richie Tozier hasn’t changed much in five years, and if it weren’t for the five o’clock shadow that’s creeping towards full-on stubble, Eddie might say he hasn’t aged at all. He looks exactly as Eddie remembers him - which, if he’s being honest, he tries very hard not to remember Richie at all. But he’s here, in the middle of LaGuardia, looking like some sort of hippie-cum-functional alcoholic, and it takes a hard tug on his tie from Myra for him to realize  _ oh shit, _ he’s been staring.

“Eddie, what are you looking at?” she asks with little patience, twisting around to see what’s so interesting. 

“Nothing, hon.” He tugs her back. The thought of reuniting with Richie is one thing, but the thought  _ Richie  _ meeting  _ Myra _ ...

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Richie walking in their direction, and while Eddie may have worn significantly fewer suits at UMaine, he’s as baby-faced as he’s been since he was seventeen. Richie would have to be stupid,  _ clinically  _ stupid, to not recognize him. 

His hands twitch, itching for an inhaler he already has packed into his carry-on, but he also sees an opportunity here and doesn’t exactly stop himself from fumbling his briefcase onto the white tile.

“Oh, shit!” he says, maybe a little too enthusiastically, as he dives down, head tucked parallel with his shoes so Richie won’t see the face of the bumbling businessman with his papers spread out across the floor.

“Eddie, language-” Myra chastises, and he wants to snap,  _ “Don’t say my name! Then he’ll know who I am!” _ But that is A) a sure-fire way of getting himself noticed by the very person he’s trying to avoid, and B) a sure-fire way to get Myra blubbering in front of all these people, which will  _ also _ get him noticed by the person he is trying to avoid. 

He waits until he sees a pair of birkenstocks (with mismatched socks underneath) pass by out of the corner of his eye, just a few feet away. He stands back up and glances over his shoulder just in time to catch the back of Richie’s psychedelic digs and ill-fitting pants. 

When he looks to Myra, she’s staring over his shoulder at Richie too, her lips pursed and nose wrinkled like she’s smelled something rotten.

“Ugh. Remember when people used to dress up to fly? Now everyone is so sloppy.”

Eddie nods, but he’s barely listening. He’s watching Richie ascend the escalator, thinking  _ That was a close one _ , and wondering why he feels almost disappointed.

\---

He gets through security with very little fanfare, with the exception of the woman ahead of him who can’t find her boarding pass for what feels like five minutes, but he’s still so on edge from his near brush with Richie that he finds himself asking for a bloody mary as soon as the flight attendant passes by his seat.

Whatever. It’s the morning, and these are the benefits of flying business class. He’s allowed a little luxury. 

He immediately regrets his decision about a half second into his first sip. 

“Well, as I live and breathe.” 

He chokes, startled by the thick, drawling voice to his left that can only be a Voice, capital V. Bloody mary mix dribbles off his chin and onto his tie.

“Motherfuck,” he mutters. He squeezes his eyes shut and braces himself to look.

Richie Tozier is towering over him, a smirk on his face, the flight attendant gesturing for him to sit in the seat next to Eddie. 

“Are you alright, sir?” she asks. 

“Fine. I’m fine.” He dabs at his tie with a cocktail napkin, thankful he brought spares but frustrated that they’re all in his checked luggage. Then he’s even more frustrated with himself for packing a checked bag for a weekend trip in the first place, but it’s a price he’s willing to pay for the gift of preparedness.

“My, my. Eddie Kaspbrak. Business class.” Richie lowers himself into the seat next to him. “Somebody really did well for himself after college.”

Eddie cocks an eyebrow, all hopes of a relaxing flight dashed for good. “Pot. Kettle.” 

“Oh, no, I am not a business class traveler.” As if to hammer that point in, he kicks his feet up against the wall. “They asked me to move up here. Something about the weight distribution of the plane, steel death trap, fiery descent, all that jazz.” 

“Are you always this soothing?” 

“Does flying make you nervous?”

“Safer than driving a car,” Eddie says, which is both statistically true and deeply comforting to him. It’s not the crash statistics that bother him so much anymore, not nearly as much as the recycled air, cracker crumbs stuck between seats, unvaccinated children. There’s a reason he sits business, and it’s not because he’s a particularly fancy bitch.

Richie hums, then turns to face forward, tapping his bitten-down fingernails restlessly against the armrest, like he’s jonesing. “Remember when you could smoke on planes? Shit, remember when you could smoke in hospitals...”

He lets Richie’s voice turn to white noise and just  _ looks  _ at him. He had thought back at the ticketing desk that Richie couldn’t have looked more like how Eddie remembered him, but the longer he looks, the less true it becomes. The hair, the thick-rimmed glasses, and the novelty T-shirts are all relics of his four-year stay at the University of Maine, but Richie has grown into himself in a different way. His jaw sharper, his arms filling out his sleeves like they never did in college, the faintest hint of smile lines at the corners of his eyes. He looks...good. Not put together, not in the slightest, but like someone who’s living a life.

“Was that you back there?” Richie asks, startling Eddie out of his white noise trance. “Did you spill like your whole fuckin’ briefcase all over the floor?”

Eddie feels his face flush red before Richie even comments on it, which of course he  _ does _ . “Dude, I totally thought that was you! I was like, ‘I’ve seen this guy before,’ and then I thought, ‘Well, no grown man is this short except for-’”

“I’m five-nine, it’s the worldwide average!”

“‘-Eddie fuckin’ Kaspbrak,’” he finishes. There’s a weird tingle in his chest, deep below his ribcage, at the thought that Richie would still think of him after all these years, even if it’s insulting to still be thought of as short, which he’s  _ not _ .

“Who was that with you?” Richie asks. “Sister? Mom? Mrs. Doubtfire-esque housekeeper-”

“She’s my girlfriend,” Eddie snaps. Then corrects himself. “F-fiancée, actually.”

Richie lets out a low whistle as his eyebrows shoot all the way up to his hairline. “Eds, you  _ dog _ -”

The flight attendant speaks over the intercom, spieling about safety regulations and standards, and Eddie pretends to follow along with the pamphlet diagrams just to avoid Richie’s playfully lecherous stares.

“Don’t call me that,” he says on auto pilot, flipping to some crude drawings of a woman putting an oxygen mask on a baby. 

“Am I invited to the wedding? Oh, please, say I’m invited-” 

“We haven’t even sent out save the dates, my own mother isn’t even technically invited to the wedding yet.” 

It’s not exactly true - up until this moment, Sonia is the only person he has told about his and Myra’s agreement to get married. Her joy at hearing he was marrying a “nice Christian woman” got him back on her Christmas card list for the first time since he moved to New York.

He’s not exactly teeming with people to share the news with. The guys at the office are all friendly enough, but none of them had ever asked if he had a girlfriend, and he hasn’t exactly offered up the information willingly. It’s just...not the kind of stuff he talks about.

And he’s still waiting to tell Bev the news - they don’t see each other much now that she’s in Chicago, but they text sometimes, and they have tentative lunch plans when he lands in the city. She’s his only real friend who’s actually ever met Myra after one tedious dinner spent together last summer when she came to visit-

( _ “So Myra is…” Bev says, drumming her fingers on the tablecloth while she searches for a compliment. Myra is in the back somewhere complaining to the chef that her chicken was undercooked, which even Eddie must admit seemed liked a stretch.“Well, she certainly cares about you.” _

_ He nods. “She’s great.” _

_ Bev hesitates. “Eddie, are you…” she trails off, and he waits for the inevitable  _ are you okay _ s and  _ are you sure about her _ s, twisting his fingers around the stem of his water glass. _

_ But then Bev smiles and covers his wrist with a delicate hand, smooth except for her sewing-needle finger tips. “I really hope you’re happy.”) _

-and Eddie had had to accept that Myra was going to be an acquired taste for most people. Which is fine. He loves her just enough to be okay with spending more time at home than out with people, never mind how much Myra happens to hate when he comes home late, and as long as Bev, maybe his oldest friend in the world at this point, approves of his happiness, then that’s all he needs.

But still. It’s not like he doesn’t want to talk about his life. Or have friends to share it with. It would be nice to think that there will be more than two guests at his wedding, and that’s if Myra even lets Bev come…

But now Richie knows too, and that makes three, right? Surely that’s enough for a save the date and a meal ticket.

God, he’s pathetic. He and Richie aren’t friends, he reminds himself. They’re two strangers who have somehow traveled many cumulative miles together by coincidence and circumstance alone.

But aren’t most friendships built out of weaker stuff than that anyway?

He waits until they’ve taken off, holding tightly to his arm rests while Richie grins at the roar of the engine. Then, once they’ve leveled out in the air, he slides a napkin and a pen from his front pocket over to Richie’s tray table. Richie stares at him blankly, then stretches his mouth into a grin. 

“Trying to get my digits, Kaspbrak? I thought you were a taken man.”

“It’s for your address, dumbass.”

Richie’s mouth curves into a softer smile, but makes no move to take the pen. “Eds, I was joking, you don’t have to-” 

“Just do the damn thing before I change my mind!”

Richie obeys like a lap dog, scrawling in messy blue ink. He hands both the napkin and the pen back to him. “You’re not gonna use that for any illegal dealings, are you? Send a hitman to my house?”

“Well, I wouldn’t tell you if I was, would I?” He slips the napkin into the inner pocket of his jacket, where it’s more likely to stay undisturbed. Richie still has that soft smile on his face, and Eddie’s chest warms. This genuineness, a smile with no punchline...it looks good on Richie.

“So how’s it treating you?” Richie asks. “Engaged life.”

“Oh. It’s…” Fine. “It’s good.”

Richie waits, then realizes there isn’t much more to the story. “Eds, please, you’re talking my ear off,” he deadpans.

“I’m sorry, okay!” He scowls and crosses his arms. “I don’t know what you want me to say!”

“I thought you’d at least have some nice things to say about the woman you’re going to marry.”

“I said it’s good! She’s good!”

“Now I totally believe you. You seem over the moon.” 

“Oh, fuck you!” 

The guy seated behind them clears his throat. Eddie glares, a silent  _ mind your own business _ in the curl of his lip.

He turns back to Richie, who looks stupidly pleased with himself. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Aw, Eds, it’s okay. Not everyone can be a wordsmith in the ways of love.”

He’s struck with a memory of Richie circa sophomore year, standing atop a wobbly table in the dining hall as he proclaimed his love to Beverly while she fanned herself like some Southern Belle. Eddie had laughed then before he could help himself, but rolled his eyes and turned away as Richie’s declaration had turned into a poorly rehearsed rendition of “Alas, Poor Yorick!” He had used a pear as a prop, and then the cooks politely asked him to keep his ass in his chair.

Richie was always doing things like that - putting on a show, not really caring if the attention was positive or negative, just as long as somebody was laughing, even if the only person laughing was him. It never was. There was always someone to coax a smile out of, like Bev or the theatre majors or Stanley Uris, a guy Eddie always thought seemed too straitlaced and respectable to spend as much time with Richie as he did. But people  _ liked  _ Richie, and while Eddie was busy double-majoring and applying to be an RA, Richie was getting written up for running pantsless through the fountains on campus. Not naked. Just pantsless.

Then, it had made Eddie feel superior. Now, he feels utterly...wasted. Lonely. He can barely remember what he did with his friends in college. But he remembers Richie jokingly asking Beverly to wear his ring on Taco Tuesday in front of the entire cafeteria.

He’s struck with another thought, one that makes his collar feel tight and itchy...Richie never really did date in college, did he? He talked a big game, always insistent upon his prowess and his  _ dick size _ , which is why Eddie always assumed he  _ had  _ been some kind of romantic wordsmith or sexual expert or  _ secret adonis _ under all his ugly shirts-

“I  _ know _ you’re not referring to yourself,” Eddie says, because it sounds more like a joke than a question.

“I’ve done alright!” Richie insists. 

Eddie tries not to sound eager as he blurts, “Are you seeing somebody?” And then he feels silly for being eager at all, and for needing to hide said eagerness, and for not getting why any of it matters. 

“Two years this month.” Richie preens, and Eddie can tell instantly that it isn’t a joke. “See? You’re not the only one with an old ball and chain.” He looks so happy when he says it, and Eddie feels completely punched out.

He can see it, too, is the thing, he can see Richie with a nice girl, the kind who wears her hair in braids and likes to watch  _ The Daily Show _ instead of the evening news. They probably met on an improv team or something. She’d be laid back, but not lazy, and she doesn’t mind when he’s out late doing stand-up ( _ Is Richie still doing stand-up? _ he wonders as a side note). She’s neat where Richie is messy, tough where he’s soft, all that yin-and-yang shit that you read about. She probably calls him Rich, nothing cutesy, just  _ Rich _ , and she never makes him feel bad for going out of town or trying new things without her-

He shakes away the made-up future Mrs. Tozier, like when you up from a weird dream that you’d rather forget the details of.

“Wow.  _ Wow _ , Tozier, I gotta say-”

“Not what you expected?” He scrunches his nose up until it crinkles between his eyebrows. “You thought you were still getting-” he puts on a generic announcer voice “- _ New York playboy Richie Tozier, cockmaster and pussy destroyer _ -”

“First of all, ew. Absolutely not.” He doesn’t even want to begin to think about what a  _ cockmaster  _ is supposed to be. “No, I was just thinking...you know. I never saw you date anybody in college.”

“That’s because I didn’t.”

“But not for lack of trying.”

“Ehhhhh.” He takes a swig from a flat Diet Coke bottle sticking out of his coat pocket. “I wasn’t  _ good  _ at trying. But I mean...nobody  _ likes  _ being single. I sure as fuck didn’t.”

“I do,” Eddie says, then immediately blanches. “Not that I- I don’t- I  _ love _ -”

“Say no more, Eduardo.” He pats him genially on the shoulder. “Ball. And. Chain.”

“I  _ don’t- _ ” He clenches his fists, counts to ten, can hear his mother telling him not to shout because good little boys don’t shout. “I don’t call her that. I don’t  _ think  _ of her like that. That’s very...chauvinistic.”

“Just call me Al Bundy.” He pauses. “Was Al Bundy sexist? I never really watched that show-”

Eddie ignores him. “I mean, do you talk to your girlfriend like that? Or about her like that?”

Richie doesn’t respond. Eddie feels like he must have hit a nerve and tries to backpedal into something more civil.

“I mean, do you think you’ll ever get married?” 

Richie cocks an eyebrow, mouth widening as he lets out an, “Uhhh…” The flight attendant comes by to collect their trash and he claps his lips shut until she’s gone. “If they’ll ever let me, I guess.”

Eddie huffs a laugh through his nose at the thought of Richie being forcibly dragged from a courthouse, trying to get married but being banned from it by the state.  _ On what grounds? _ he almost asks, but not a second passes before he is sucker punched by a  _ vivid  _ memory.

He’s spent so long trying to forget the incident that ruined their last trip that he completely erased what had sparked it in the first place. In his mind’s eye, Richie had been annoying, Eddie had had a crazy freak-out asthma attack, and they had coldly parted ways under the assumption that they just didn’t get along.

But that’s not what happened at all, is it?

“Ummm,” Richie states blankly. “Sorry-”

“No!” Eddie nearly shouts, earning a kick to the back of his seat by the same fucking asshole behind them. “No, don’t be sorry,  _ I’m  _ sorry-”

“I should have- I mean, I knew how you’d react and I still-”

“Dude, seriously, it’s not your fault-” He feels sick to his stomach, regretting instantly the watered down bloody mary and his own stupid fucking selective memory.

“I mean, you made it very clear how you felt back in college, I should have known not to bring it up.” Richie isn’t looking at him, he’s staring just past his face out the window at the clouds that roll by. 

“Richie, I’m not-” Not what? Not angry? He is, maybe a little, but at himself. And the more he sits with it, the more it feels like a deep rolling shame instead. “I’m not, like,  _ homophobic  _ or anything.”

Richie pinches the bridge of his nose, looking suddenly like he’d rather be anywhere else,  _ with  _ anyone else. “I’m sure you’re not. Just keep it behind closed doors, right?” Acerbic and dry, putting up a wall and piercing Eddie to his core.

He didn’t think of himself as being homophobic, he really didn’t. Even back then it just felt like an aversion towards even the  _ concept  _ of sexuality and all that entails, sticky and fluid and hot and intimate and vulnerable. And he still doesn’t understand why he had freaked out on Richie that day, other than a generally realized fear of  _ stickyfluidhotintimatevulnerable _ . But he feels like a grade A dickhead for taking it out on Richie then and for fucking it up again right now.

“Listen.” He turns into Richie’s space so completely that he has no choice but to make eye contact with him. “That was a very long time ago, I was a very different person, and I was a thousand times stupider than I am now. But I’m not...I don’t…”

Richie’s face has started to soften a little, even while the rest of him is closed off, and Eddie says as firmly as he can, “I’m really happy for you.”

Richie nods very slowly for a long time, then huffs out a huge breath that relaxes his shoulders down from where they’re scrunched by his ears. “Thanks, Eds. You’re not bad for a bigot.”

“Seriously, I  _ promise- _ ”

“I’m kidding. Jesus, you straight people can’t take a joke.” 

Eddie smiles because Richie is smiling and that feels like a good enough reason to. “You’re so goddamn unbearable.” 

“Too late to back down now, you’re a certified gay ally. You can’t criticize me anymore or it’s homophobic.”

“That is not how it works.”

“Eh. Take it up with PFLAG.”

\---

It’s raining in Chicago when they both deplane. They hail separate cabs next to each other, Eddie flipping his inside-out jacket over his head to use as a shield and kicking himself for not thinking to pack a fucking umbrella of all things. Richie just lets the rain plaster his hair to his face and soak through his shoes, which would be admirable if it weren’t so disgusting.

Richie manages to hail a taxi first because his arms are ungodly long, and he waves cheerily to Eddie from the backseat as he speeds away. Eddie flips him the bird. Richie just throws his head back and laughs.

It feels good to have a friend. So good that it overshadows how goddamn weird all of their encounters have been.

Myra calls him the second he gets in his own cab, screeching about how his plane was scheduled to land ten minutes ago and how is she supposed to know if he made okay it if he doesn’t tell her? He soothes her, assures her he’s fine, and pointedly doesn’t tell her anything about the flight, but only because she wouldn’t be that interested anyway.

Bev meets him in the bar at the hotel he’s staying in, and she barely has her arms around him before he blurts, “Guess who I sat next to on my flight?”

“Who?”

“Richie Tozier.”

“No  _ fucking  _ way.”

They skip right past the niceties into what kind of feels like gossip, the two of them hunched over glasses of white wine. “I haven’t heard from him since college,” Bev says. “He was terrible at picking up the phone, so after a while I just...stopped calling.” She grimaces sheepishly into her drink. 

“I didn’t really want to stay in touch with him back then, but-”

Her eyebrows are raised in a gesture he can’t quite decipher. “But you do now?” 

Eddie feels a heat rising that he’s going to pass off as a wine blush. “He’s not terrible, all things considered.”

“Did you get his number?”

“No, but he gave me his address so I can invite him to the wedding.” He pats at his pockets. “Shit, where did I-”

He fishes the napkin out of his inner coat pocket and is greeted by a smear of blue ink, still damp and leaking to the edges of the napkin. It doesn’t look like any human language, that’s for damn sure.

“Oh, fuck.”

The rain. The fucking rain. 

He could pack four pairs of dress pants for a two-day conference, but he couldn’t pack an umbrella. He just  _ had  _ to use his jacket for cover. Goddammit, Eddie.

Bev looks legitimately mournful. “Oh, no.” She rubs his back gently. “I’m sure he won’t be that hard to track down.”

He nods, but he doesn’t feel optimistic. He feels like he’s fucked everything up again, and this time Richie won’t even know why.

He feels what can only be described as the briefest instance of grief. Then, a cool wave of acquiescence.  _ Back to the drawing board _ , he thinks, resigned to taking Richie’s name off the mental wedding invite list. Maybe he’ll just get married at the courthouse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> people are gay, steven
> 
> i am richietozierpussyindulgence on tumblr, but i understand if that's a collection of words that you don't want to type, i don't like that i typed it either

**Author's Note:**

> i promise the next chapters won't be this fucking depressing! but that is the nature of enemies to friends to lovers!
> 
> i am richietozierpussyindulgence on tumblr, where i mostly obsess over how big bill hader's hands are


End file.
